


Wiser Daemons

by Not_You



Series: Avengers Daemon Two-Pack [2]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Childhood Friends, Daemons, F/M, M/M, Multi, Past Abuse, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings, daemon porn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-02
Updated: 2012-10-11
Packaged: 2017-11-15 11:50:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/526993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Not_You/pseuds/Not_You
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for a prompt on Avengerkink for characters touching each other's daemons.  I went with Clint/Natasha, first time daemon-touching as their relationship moves to its next level.</p><p>ETA: And then I filled it again, and realized I should just make this a little series about my headcanon of the Avengers' daemons because it's as good an excuse as any.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Wiser Daemons

Before, Daumantas had been used to it. The great taboo barely existed in the Red Room, where Natasha's trainers had lifted him, weighed him, evaluated the sleekness of his coat. That's how he knows that he doesn't have a single hair that isn't black, and that he is very small for a male sable, only fourteen inches from nose to tail tip. He doesn't even weigh a full two pounds, and spends all the time he can looped around Natasha's neck. He has never liked being touched by others, but the first shrieking sickness and horror had died down. When they touched him, he and Natasha would step back from reality, and they would take that step together, everything glazed with ice, and their spirit just numb enough to bear it.

Now they're with SHIELD, where people still weigh him but stand back and let Natasha lift him onto the scale and take him off again. The first time she had just stood there with Daumantas in her arms waiting for them to take him, they had all recoiled in horror, eyes wide and sick. It has taken them a long time to come back to what's right, to be here with Clint and with Sky. She and Daumantas touch, of course. Touched before they knew each other's names, Sky snatching Daumantas up and flying higher and higher until they were too terrified and faint to finish killing Clint. She's glad now, and tells him so, feeling his laugh with her head on his chest.

"Izzat so?" He murmurs, lazy and teasing, dragging his calloused, blunt fingertips lightly up and down her spine. Daumantas mirrors her happy shiver, curled up on the other pillow with Sky preening him. "Guess I've done my job all right." And that would scare her, would dump betrayal into her blood like stress hormones if it wasn't Clint. Sex is never really a job for him and she knows it. Knows it so well she can catch one hand and kiss the palm.

"Yes." More than all right. Her whole body is a precision instrument, after all, and those dextrous fingers had taken her apart as surely as one of his guns. She nuzzles him and kisses a scar. He has a lot of them, and she likes them. Sky cheeps softly, sharp, sharp beak so gentle with the edge of Daumantas's tiny ear. He turns over, flexible spine letting him coil around Sky like a snake, and the friction of feathers and fur makes all of them shudder.

"Oh, dearest one," Sky whispers in that soft and sweet voice that she so rarely uses. Clint blushes a deep red and hides his face in Natasha's hair and she can't handle this, she's feeling too much. When she reaches over it's to touch Daumantas if not actually pull him away, but Sky looks at her with those gold coin eyes staring out of the dark mask that stripes her face, and Natasha suddenly has to touch her. Just a little, as if she can get away with it. Her questing fingertips land on the slate blue cere that divides the lethal black beak from tiny, sleek feathers, and slide up the face of this killer that is so _soft_ , so perfectly smooth. Sky quivers, powerful wings fluttering, and Clint gasps, high and sharp and voiced, almost a cry. She snatches her hand back and looks at him and his face doesn't tell her anything she doesn't already know. She's seen him shot, and before the pain comes there's the wide-eyed shock, so pure it could be ecstasy.

"Clint?" It's Daumantas who speaks, husky and nervous and right in Clint's ear, the same way he speaks to Natasha. Clint turns and stares into bright, dark eyes.

"Touch me again," he whispers, and Sky stretches forward, letting Natasha stroke her sleek head. She cheeps and fluffs her feathers and leans into Natasha's cautious caresses, an Easter chick instead of a raptor. Clint shudders, panting the same ragged way he does when she nuzzles up his side and bites until he nearly bleeds. "Oh, Jesus fucking Christ..."

"You're beautiful." She can't look away from those golden eyes, but she's speaking to both of them and they all know it. She doesn't know how long she sits there, just stroking Sky's feathers and beak, tickling under her chin and gently preening her wings while Clint makes helpless little noises, far beyond words. Well, all words but one.

"Daumantas," he whispers, and reaches for her daemon. For just a moment she thinks of the past, but the gesture is completely different at its heart, a sweet supplication.

"No," Natasha says, and Clint freezes, searching her face. She feels powerful and then horribly guilty.

"You're the only man we feel bad lying to, Clint," Daumantas says. "She just had to test it."

"You know. You know I wouldn't."

"I believe it was Walt Whitman who said that daemons are wiser than their men." And he pauses for a moment, forcing himself to stay inside his skin. Sky hops into Natasha's arms without a word, letting her cradle that buzzing heart and those delicate bones close as she breathes deep and tries just to stay where she is.

And then Clint is touching them, and everything either stops or finally starts again, it's hard to say. First there's that little break in the anbaric field that extends just beyond every daemon's corporeal body, and usually it feels... not painful, but strange, almost a numbing. Now she realizes what that is, that it's a protective reaction against unwanted disruption. Now it feels like the currents are crawling up Clint's fingers and blending with his own energy. It tingles pleasantly, and then those deadly gentle hands ( _talons_ , some part of her insists) are buried in Daumantas's rich fur, feeling the sleekness and deception of her very soul. How much power is packed into such a small space in each of them, and she knows that Clint and Sky know that she loves him, something she couldn't know herself until now, with Daumantas half-swooning in rapture, Clint staring at him with awestruck eyes.

They spend the rest of that night together, learning to touch and to trust.


	2. Loving You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just threeway daemon porn, with daemon touching. Very intimate daemon touching, especially since Tony's daemon has hands.

It's really just part of loving Bruce, part of this thing they have, where they settle on each side of him and love each other as hard as they can and wrap him up in it. It takes a lot to make him feel safe enough to allow this, but Tony and Pepper take their time, melting him slowly until Rhea can bear to be touched. The time gets shorter with each repetition of the experiment, Tony is pleased to note. While they wait, they cover Bruce in kisses, and Pan and Hector cuddle Rhea the same way. She and Bruce make almost the same silly little muffled grunts of contentment, and Tony grins, watching as Pan scratches her back and Hector licks her face. Her eyes are squinched shut, straight tail rotating joyfully. Her neat little trotters are folded underneath her, and she nuzzles Hector with her snout.

"God, we love you so much," Bruce whispers, and then blushes, hiding his face in the hollow of Pepper's throat.

"We know," she murmurs, stroking his hair, "we know."

Tony kisses the back of Bruce's neck as Pan presses a smacking chimp kiss to Rhea's head and then clambers up Tony's body to watch Bruce pant and shiver. "Can I touch him, boss?"

"Not yet, dammit."

"Pllleeeeaaasse?"

Bruce bursts out laughing, and rolls onto his back to look Pan in the eye. "You, sir, are nothing but trouble."

"We do our best. C'mon, lemme touch you. You know you like it." He wheedles shamelessly, as erect as his human and joyfully sleazy.

"What did you say when you'd settled as a bonobo, Pan?"

"Bitchin', this is the best shape for sex."

"I knew it." And then that simian hand is wrapping around his cock, because it's not enough to break the taboo, they have to run before they walk. Bruce bucks and cries out, eyes huge and tinged with green before it bleeds away again because Pan knows everything Tony does and by god does Tony know how to give a handjob. Tony has one hand knotted into Pan's dark pelt, the other reaching across Bruce to cling to Pepper. Rhea is as melted as her human, letting out soft and happy little grunts and squeals as Hector nuzzles and licks her. They're pretty together, Hector's red-ticked fur against Rhea's black skin, and he looks up with a doggy grin, tongue hanging out.

"You knew what you were getting into," he says, upright ears pricked forward and tail wagging.

"For a given value," Bruce pants, "Oh, _fuck_ …" Tony just whimpers, rutting against Bruce's hip.

"Come on, Rhea love. We want to touch you." Hector gets up on his vulpine little paws and noses Rhea up to Pepper's waiting arms. Rhea is so solid and her trotters are so small that it's hard for her to make her way over the soft surface of the bed, and Pepper smiles, watching her ungainly progress. Rhea doesn't speak, but gives her a pleading look.

"It is funny, sweetheart," Pan tells Rhea, and Pepper reaches for her.

"Come to me, piglet."

Rhea grunts and lets Pepper scoop her up. Bruce gasps, bucking up into Pan's hand, feeling like either his heart or his cock is going to explode before too much more of this. Overloaded and dizzy with emotion and sensation, he still reaches for Hector. Because they're not complete yet. Not until all three of them are soul to soul. And then Pepper's Red Heeler daemon is in his arms, whimpering and wriggling and licking his face and then _into_ his mouth and it's gross and good and perfect and he hasn't felt this loved since the last time his mother's gentle Attis had cuddled his fluffy white body right against Rhea's and sang to them. Now he lets his tears flow, and Hector licks them away.


	3. Past and Present

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thor and Jane's daemons take a trip down memory lane.

It takes Jane a while to get used to Red changing. She was locked in the form of a goat when Jane and Thor met, because a grown Midgardian's daemon doesn't change. At first she feels like a pedophile, for all Sterling's assurances that it's _different_ , that Red has settled, just into a range and not a single point on it.

Jane had smiled at him, stroking his pointed little head. "And what would you change to, if you still could?"

"Do I get three other forms, like Red?"

"Sure."

"Hmm…" He curls his cervine little legs beneath him, thinking. "Well, everyone loves flying. I'd like to be able to be a raven again, that was fun. And something a little more imposing, like that panther shape I used to take."

"You know Darcy would point out that you have fangs and fangs are cool."

"Whatever." He nuzzles Jane. "I guess for the last one it might be fun to be a python sometimes. But only sometimes."

She's thinking about this conversation later, when she and Thor are curled up in her bed. Red is a squirrel now, perched on Thor's shoulder. Her fur is very, very red, and so soft that through the feeling of integrating with her anbaric field, Jane has to be looking to know exactly when she makes contact with it. All of Red's forms are larger than the real animal, and this one is the size of a tiny housecat.

"What were your favorite forms when you were children, Red?"

"That I didn't settle on?"

"Yeah." She cuddles Thor, who makes a happy rumbling sound, more than lazy enough to let his daemon do the talking.

"Well… I did love being a skellig." She pauses. "Something tells me you don't have them here."

Jane giggles, and imitates Thor's utter sloth. "Nope," Sterling murmurs, little hooves pawing the air on the far side of his human. 

"They're a sort of sea lizard. Very agile, and my scales shimmered like rubies."

Jane can see it in her mind, the flashing red creature in the clear sea with its golden child beside it. And presumably a dark child with a green or black or silver skellig of his own, too. Whatever Loki does, she can love that child for Thor, for laughing with him then even if it strengthens the hurt he feels now. Sterling shares that sorrow the way he shares everything else, and presses against her back for a long moment, comforting and solid.

"Jane asked me which three forms besides mouse deer I would have kept if I could," he says, standing carefully on his little hooves, wobbling a bit on the mattress. "We were wondering about you." He clambers up onto Jane and then over to Thor because he can take the weight better, all of them trembling when he makes contact.

"Oh…" Red murmurs, and she speaks for all of them, conversation forgotten for a long moment along with absolutely everything else. It's funny how something that isn't new can be such a shock every time. Jane wonders in sober moments if some of it is the higher energy levels of an Asgardian daemon, or whatever factor it is that allows them to change despite having if anything more Dust than a human's. Right now she's certain that it would feel the same if Thor were human, that she could tolerate no more without coming apart at the seams. She used to wonder if Thor were equally affected, since he has surely touched someone else's daemon in his long life, but his breath catches and he whimpers softly every time. He stares at her in awed amazement that has to be genuine when they're facing each other, and now she can feel his heart speeding up, and his arm stretches back across his body so he can hold onto her hip as if it will keep him from being swept away. They adjust, and take a deep breath, and Red answers at last. "If I could have held onto three more, I would have kept the skellig, my lioness shape, and…" She hums, thinking, and then nuzzles Sterling, "My elk form then, little deer."

"It's what all the best people are wearing," Sterling teases, and Red laughs, flicking her tail.


	4. Lost and Found

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve touches the Winter Soldier's daemon, snapping Bucky out of his brainwashing. I'm not even sure if this is romance or deep platonic love, weigh in on it in the comments if you like.

The cage clangs shut and even with the damage and with Captain America's strength it will hold. Columbia is still shaking, all her fur on end. The Red Skull moves to the control panel and prepares to bring the blade down as Steve gets one arm free. The Skull laughs at him for thinking that can possibly help, but the Winter Soldier's wolf is closer than she seems, and one red glove grabs her silver-grey ruff.

"Scrapper! Scrapper, don't let them do this to us!" His voice cracks, and the Skull laughs.

"I may not have cut them yet, but I may as well have. He doesn't even react when she is touched. Perfect."

"Scrapper," Steve whispers, not even hearing him. He stares into the wolf's golden eyes, begging her and the man who was once Bucky Barnes to do the right thing.

Later, holed up in Latveria, the Skull supposes he should have known that Barnes was still weak inside, still incapable of truly following his vision. Now he just deals with the Soldier turning on him as best he can, letting another perfectly good base of operations go up in flames.

"Intercision," Tony says, picking through the wreckage. "That sick son of a bitch." Everyone listens very intently, because Steve is hugging the Winter Soldier's daemon tightly and watching that would be obscene. Columbia is letting this enemy of theirs hold her the same way, his face buried in her golden fur and the whole line of his spine pressed to Steve's. Both of them are crying, the ragged, childlike sobs of men who aren't used to it. They muffle themselves in muscle and fur as Tony explains the full depth and horror of the Red Skull's plans, voice cracking a little. Everyone feels ridiculous, standing there listening to a science lecture, but SHIELD is already tracking the Skull and they can't actually turn and look because if they looked they would see, and they can already feel it. Daumantas is almost entirely hidden by Natasha's hair, a shadow collar. Pan has climbed Tony like a tree, and clings to his back while Sky has perched on Clint's arm guard, tucking her fierce little head in under his chin and sweeping a wing up in an embrace. Red changes from fox to squirrel and runs up to Thor's shoulder while Bruce and Rhea inspect what remains of the controls.

"Uh, hey. Steve?" Tony says, once they have no excuse to mill around any longer. "Tuxedo Mask?"

Bucky and Steve look up with identical expressions of old man confusion. "What?"

Tony finds himself explaining the reference in transit back to base, while Clint makes fun of him for being able to. Steve just stares into Bucky's eyes and keeps touching him, unable to believe that he's real. They lean on each other for the entire debriefing, and Columbia roars when the med techs come for samples. Steve quiets her, and very politely informs them that he's not going to let Bucky out of his sight. No one argues with him, and they don't see Steve again until he brings Bucky home and sets him up in the nearest guest room and feeds him and worries about him and finally gives up on sleeping in his own bed at all, climbing in beside his friend and wrapping around him to take away the chill of remembered ice.

It's still surreal to see the Winter Soldier in their kitchen, eating his breakfast with one arm because the other is at SHIELD, being checked for traps. He looks so devastatingly _normal_ in a pair of Steve's jeans and a giant t-shirt with Cap's shield on it. Only Scrapper gives him away, her head pressed to his knee like a nervous dog. It looks odd on her powerful, rangy frame, and Columbia is curled protectively around her as Steve adds more brown sugar to his friend's oatmeal.

Wandering past them to start coffee, Tony squints at the table with its selection of condiments and fruit, and Pan leans down from his shoulders to snag some blueberries, passing them to Tony as he walks. "Are those cloudberries? Jarvis? When the hell did we start ordering cloudberries?"

"Thor requested them, sir."

"That is so cool," Bucky murmurs, looking in the general up direction that works to indicate both Jarvis and God.

"Yeah." Steve rests his head on Bucky's shoulder without a hint of self-consciousness. It's fucking beautiful.

"You want some coffee, soldier boy?"

"Please. Whatever Hydra gave me, it didn't make caffeine stop working."

"Awesome. You want some, Capsicle?"

"Maybe if it were colder out, but no thanks."

Bucky chuckles. "I guess I'm the only other person who remembers when you lived on it."

"Yeah. I've missed you too, you dumb palooka." He chucks Bucky under the chin far too lightly to hurt.

"You can take the boy out of Brooklyn…" Bucky murmurs with a sly little grin that would be easy to fall in love with, and Scrapper finally raises her head, tail wagging gently. Pan hops down and knuckles over, making a deep bow.

"Madame," he says, and starts grooming her, making Steve groan and bury his face in one palm.

"Dammit, Tony."

"Hey, it just means I'm overcome by your pal's charm and wanna make him feel at home. Got any specialty fruits we should order?"

"I get the feeling there's enough of 'em in this tower already," Bucky cracks.

Pan hoots with Tony's laughter, and Steve realizes with a sense of deep foreboding and deeper joy that these two will probably get along quite well.


End file.
